The Brass Go-Between

Chapter seventeen

The golf driving range was called Puckett’s and it took up several acres of gradually sloping land on Wisconsin Avenue just this side of the District line. A dozen or so golfers were trying to straighten out their hooks and slices with big tin buckets full of balls that they drove with varying success at markers which told whether they were hitting 100, 150, 200, or 300 yards. There was also a single marker that read 500 yards but nobody seemed to pay it much attention. Giant banks of floodlights provided almost day-bright illumination, and out in the middle of the driving range a gasoline-powered cart covered with a steel-mesh cage shuffled back and forth gobbling up the spent balls like an oversized vacuum cleaner. There were more cars than there were golfers. Some of them probably contained people whose television sets had broken down for the night and who would watch anything, even 45-year-old duffers, as long as it was for free. Some of the cars were empty and some contained lone women who seemed resigned to a fate which had married them off to men who thought that breaking 100 at Chevy Chase ranked in historical significance with the signing of a nuclear-test-ban treaty or dinner for four at the White House.

I parked the Ford five cars down from the white wooden hut that rented the balls and clubs. I sat there, exactly on time at 10:15, with $250,000 worth of neatly wrapped, well-used tens and twenties on the back seat, and watched a man in his sixties top his ball three times in a row, and waited for someone to open the rear door and hand in a brass shield that some thought could save the lives of thousands and which had already cost the lives of four.

At ten-seventeen the lights went out. One moment the big banks of floodlights on top of the tall wooden poles bathed the driving range in a glaring yellowish white. The next moment there was nothing but blackness, made even more impenetrable by the eyes’ inability to adjust. Reaction was slow. It took at least five seconds before the first horn blew. Then another. Somebody on the tee, a man, yelled, “What the hell—” and the rear door of the Ford opened. I forgot the warning and started to twist around and it may have saved my life. Something quite hard landed on the side of my head, just above the vulnerable temple, and I didn’t get to see who delivered the blow in what, I later decided, was a most competent and professional manner. Nor did I have the opportunity to see who made off with a man’s suitcase stuffed with a quarter of a million dollars in neatly wrapped, very negotiable currency.

When I came out of it I was lying on my back on the front seat and the first thing I saw was Demeter’s face upside down above me. I twisted my head quickly and threw up on the floorboards. While I was doing that Demeter kept saying, “Are you all right, are you all right?” and I kept wanting to say, “No, I’m not all right, my head hurts like hell,” but I had to throw up some more instead. Finally I was through and managed to sit up. I felt the sore place on my head and the knot seemed to be not less than an inch high and two inches wide. It wasn’t really that large; it only seemed so to my carefully sensitive touch. It hurt enough to be twice that large.

I leaned back in the seat and looked at Demeter, bending half crouched in the open right-hand door as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to get in.

“Are you all right?” he said again. I noticed that the lights were back on.

“No,” I said. I started to turn around and look in the back seat, but I didn’t because I knew it wouldn’t be any use. “No shield,” I said.

“No,” Demeter said.

“No money either.”

“No. No money.”

“One of them got to the main switch.”

“Probably the woman,” he said.

“And the man slugged me and took the suitcase.”

“That’s right.”

“How long were the lights off?”

“Two minutes, maybe three,” he said.

“And they just drove off.”

“No.”

“Don’t tell me you caught them?”

“If they’d left from here, we would’ve. We had both ends of the street sealed off.”

I touched the bump on my head again. It seemed to have grown another inch. “But they didn’t leave from here.”

“Not exactly,” he said. “From down there,” and he pointed across the driving range to its far edge where the shielded cart that sucked up the golf balls rested a few feet away from the lone sign that read five hundred yards.

“How long was I out?” I said.

“Maybe ten, eleven minutes.”

“How’d they do it?”

“They probably cased the place earlier today and found out where the main switch is. It’s in a metal box outside the shack. Don’t ask me why. Puckett says he locks it when he leaves at night, but he doesn’t lock it while he’s operating. They parked their car over there beyond those trees that are behind the five-hundred-yard marker. Walked over here and sat around watching the golf balls or even hit a few themselves until you arrived. Then she doused the lights, he slugged you, grabbed the money, and ran for the cart. That’s how I figure it anyhow.”

“How’d they find it in the dark?”

“The cart? They had a flashlight. I saw it out there, but I thought it was the guy in the cart. Anyway they slugged him and then drove to the edge of the range, jumped out, and now they’re probably home free counting the money.”

I started to shake my head but decided not to because it might hurt too much. “Clever,” I said. “Where were you and the good Sergeant Fastnaught when the lights went out, if the phrase be permitted?”

“Just four cars down from you,” Demeter said in a glum voice. “Just four lousy cars away.”

“That’ll look good in your report.”

Demeter glared at me. “Don’t ride me, St. Ives.”

“Have you told the museum or Mrs. Wingo?” I think he almost blushed. At least he looked embarrassed.

“No. Not yet.”

I slid over the seat, under the wheel, and started the engine. “Good luck,” I said.

“Where you going?”

“Well, I don’t think I can lose another quarter of a million here tonight so I thought I’d go back to the hotel and order up some ice. Some of it I’ll wrap in a towel and apply to my head. The rest I’ll use to chill what probably will prove to be a large amount of strong drink. I’ll also call Frances Wingo for you and tell her how I managed to spend the museum’s two hundred and fifty thousand bucks.”

“Uh,” Demeter said.

“Any message for her? Something reassuring like several new leads have turned up in the course of the investigation and arrests are momentarily expected? She might like that.”

Demeter slammed the right door. “Go back to the hotel, St. Ives. Go back and get drunk. Roll in the gutter. But just get out of my sight.”

I left.

Back in the hotel’s garage I gave the attendant five dollars to clean up the mess on the front floorboards and then checked the desk for messages. There were two from Frances Wingo. I went up to my room and called her number. She answered on the second ring, as if she’d been waiting for it.

“This is St. Ives,” I said.

“Yes, Mr. St. Ives,” she said, “I’ve been in touch with Mr. Spencer and he would very much like a progress report tomorrow. Would you be free at eleven o’clock?”

“Yes, I’ll be free but I don’t believe I’ll have much progress to report.”

“Nevertheless, Mr. Spencer would like a full accounting of recent developments. You needn’t mention that the police suspect that my husband engineered the theft. I’ve already told Mr. Spencer about that.”

“What did he say?”

“I scarcely think that’s any concern of yours, Mr. St. Ives. I’ll expect you in my office at eleven tomorrow. Good night.”

She hung up before I could tell her that I’d misplaced a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of the museum’s money. It was something I should have mentioned, but then I’ve always been one to postpone unpleasantness whenever possible. Tomorrow at eleven would be soon enough when Mr. Winfield Spencer came to town with his barber-college haircut and his billion-dollar checkbook. I could tell both of them then and I could almost feel Spencer’s cold green eyes boring a new hole in my head.

I called down for some ice and after it came I wrapped some of it in a towel and gently applied it to the swelling which throbbed in sharp staccato bursts of pain. I wondered if I had a concussion and tried to remember some of the symptoms. Double vision; for one. I also tried to remember whether liquor was good for a concussion and quickly convinced myself that it was. I poured a large portion into a bathroom glass, added some ice, took a reassuring swallow, and was quite set to take another when the phone rang. I picked it up and said hello.

“Mbwato, here,” the familiar deep voice said. “How are you this evening, Mr. St. Ives?”

“Not too well,” I said.

“Really. What’s wrong?”

“Just a headache.”

“Possibly brought about by nervous tension resulting from the unexpected loss of a rather large sum of money, hmmm?” And then he laughed for what seemed to be a very long time while I stood there and clutched the phone, somehow afraid that he might hang up in my ear.

When he was through laughing I said, “How did you—”

“How did I know?” he interrupted, chuckling a little, far down in his stomach. “Forgive me if I seem happy, but I think I am very close to regaining the shield for my country and when a Komporeenean is happy and successful, he likes to laugh.”

“About the money,” I said.

“Of course, of course. Its loss must be your immediate concern.”

“It does bother me a little.”

“Be bothered no more, Mr. St. Ives. Your money is safe and — uh — uh—”

“Sound,” I said.

“That’s it, sound. Strange how some clichés seem to evade one for the moment.”

“Where is it safe and sound, Mr. Mbwato?” I said as my grip on the phone threatened to crack it.

“Why with me, of course,” he said, and sounded a trifle surprised, even miffed, as if I’d questioned his legitimacy. “Would you like it back?” And the way he said it there was real candor, even wonder, in his tone.

“Yes, now that you mention it,” I said. “I would.”

“Then you shall have it. Can you come to this address?” And he gave me an address on Corcoran Place, between Q and R Streets.

“I’ll catch a cab,” I said.

“Oh, by the way, Mr. St. Ives,” Mbwato said.

“What?”

“I have something else that might be of interest to you.”

“What?”

“I have the two thieves.”